FEMINIST FORUM Porn as a Pathway to Empowerment? A Response to Peterson’ s Commentary Sharon Lamb Published online: 10 March 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract In my article on the idealization of female adolescent sexuality, I raised questions for feminist theorists and researchers about our theorizing about “desire”, “pleasure”, and “subjectivity”. Zoe Peterson’ s commentary on this article responds to one of 5 critical points I make, that the description of the ideal sexual adolescent who feels pleasure, desire, and subjectivity may be ironically similar to the commodified, sexualized, marketed teen girl. Here I correct some misrepresentations of my point of view in Peterson’ s commentary and reply to first her warning that to interpret girls differently than they interpret themselves is akin to dismissing their voices and second to her idea that a porn-influenced expression of sexuality can be seen as a step in the direction of sexual empowerment. Keywords Adolescent . Girls . Empowerment . Desire . Pornography In my paper on the idealization of female adolescent sexuality, I raised questions for feminist theorists and researchers about our theorizing about “desire”, “pleasure”, and “subjectivity” (Lamb 2010b, this issue). After presenting some history that served to explain how these ideas developed to become markers of a healthy sexuality for adolescent girls, I identified several problems with their use: 1. That focusing on female subjectivity may reify the dichotomy between subject and object; 2. that notions of desire, pleasure, and subjectivity may have different historical meanings and context for girls of color; 3. that using pleasure as a gauge for whether sex is “good” has moral implications that may undermine other important goals of feminism; 4. that a healthy sexuality that includes all these elements may be unrealistic to achieve; and 5. that the description of the ideal sexual adolescent who feels pleasure, desire, and subjectivity may be ironically similar to the commodified, sexualized, marketed teen girl. In her commentary, Peterson focuses on the last point (2010, this issue). In so doing she occasionally makes arguments quite similar to my own while giving the impression that I claimed something different in my original piece. Before addressing her interesting argument with regard to the development of empowerment in adolescent girls, I correct some of the more important places where I believe my thinking is misrepresented. In my article, I suggest that feminists’ goals for adolescent girls as they are theorized, goals of full-bodied desire, pleasure, and subjectivity, are too ambitious and suggest we might relax these goals in support of a more developmental model. I wrote, “Does it not sound too idealistic? In this era of the ‘supergirl’ in the U.S. (GirlsInc. 2006), it seems worrisome to be setting out for girls yet another path to perfection” (Lamb 2010b, this issue). I also wrote, “it would seem that they (feminist theorists) are requiring of girls something adult women still struggle with” (Lamb 2010b, this issue). Peterson makes this same point but she makes it in a way that suggests she is arguing with me when we actually agree. She writes, “We cannot expect adolescent girls to achieve unambivalent sexual empowerment when most (or all) adult women (and men) have yet to accomplish that goal” (2010, this issue). This is a point I agree with and note that Muehlenhard and Peterson S. Lamb (*) Department of Counseling and School Psychology, Graduate College of Education, 100 Morrissey Blvd., UMass Boston, Boston, MA 02130, USA e-mail: Sharon.lamb@umb.edu Sex Roles (2010) 62:314–317 DOI 10.1007/s11199-010-9756-8